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THE
Journal of Documentation
VOLUME 55 NUMBER 3 JUNE 1999
T.D. WILSON
[email protected]
1. INTRODUCTION
The aim of this paper is to review the status of models of information behaviour*
to discover how they may relate one to another and, perhaps, propose an integration
of the models into a more general framework. To this end, this paper offers a view
of the existing research as a set of ‘nested’ models bound together by a dependency
upon one another and by an increasing concern, as we move to deeper levels, with
finer and finer details of human information seeking and searching behaviour.
249
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
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All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
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written permission of the publisher.
A model may be described as a framework for thinking about a problem and may
evolve into a statement of the relationships among theoretical propositions. Most
models in the general field of information behaviour are of the former variety:
they are statements, often in the form of diagrams, that attempt to describe an
information-seeking activity, the causes and consequences of that activity, or the
relationships among stages in information-seeking behaviour. Rarely do such
models advance to the stage of specifying relationships among theoretical propo-
sitions: rather, they are at a pre-theoretical stage, but may suggest relationships
that might be fruitful to explore or test.
250
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Information user
Satisfaction or
Need
non-satisfaction
Other people
Success Failure
Information transfer
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
different, or that personal traits may inhibit or assist information seeking. Thus,
the model can be regarded as a source of hypotheses, which is a general function
of models of this kind.
The weakness of the model is that all of the hypotheses are only implicit and
are not made explicit. Nor is there any indication of the processes whereby con-
text has its effect upon the person, nor of the factors that result in the perception
of barriers, nor of whether the various assumed barriers have similar or different
effects upon the motivation of individuals to seek information. However, the very
fact that the model is lacking in certain elements stimulates thinking about the
kinds of elements that a more complete model ought to include.
Situation
Gap Outcome
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
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1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
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Bridge
time-line interviews’ such questioning leads to genuine insights that can influence
information service design and delivery, e.g. [15, 16].
254
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Browsing
Starting ––– Chaining ––– Differentiating ––– Extracting ––– Verifying Ending
Monitoring
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
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1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
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Browsing
Starting ––– Chaining ––– Differentiating ––– Extracting ––– Verifying Ending
Monitoring
256
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
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Person-in-context Risk/reward
Stress/coping Psychological
theory Passive
theory
attention
Demographic
Passive search
Social learning
Role-related or theory
interpersonal Active search
Self-
efficacy
Environmental
Ongoing
Source search
characteristics
Information
processing
and use
theory [22], which offers possibilities for explaining why some needs do not
invoke information-seeking behaviour; risk/reward theory [23, 24], which may
help to explain which sources of information may be used more than others by
a given individual; and social learning theory, which embodies the concept of
‘self-efficacy’, the idea of ‘the conviction that one can successfully execute the
behavior required to produce the [desired] outcomes’ [25].
Thus, the model remains one of macro-behaviour, but its expansion and the
inclusion of other theoretical models of behaviour make it a richer source of
hypotheses and further research than Wilson’s earlier model.
We can also attempt to relate this model to the others discussed above. It is
fairly obvious that the models of both Ellis and Kuhlthau relate to the active
search mode of information-seeking behaviour and provide, in effect, an expan-
sion of that box in the diagram above. Dervin’s model is completely different in
character, since its aim is to provide a framework for exploring the totality of
information behaviour from the exploration of the context in which information
needs arise to the means whereby that need is satisfied, whether through active
searching or otherwise. In effect, it is a model of a methodology, rather than
a model of a set of activities or a situation.
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1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
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and, on the other, with a broader perspective of the information search than simply
the use of computer-based information retrieval systems. This is an important
point to make, since the implications for IR systems from research in the general
area of information behaviour may inform the overall design principles of such
systems, and may enable the information content developer to specify more
clearly what navigational routes are needed through the information and exactly
what kind of information or data types need to be in the record, but the specifica-
tion of rules for the design of interactive systems on the basis of information
behaviour research may not be possible. Thus, from Wilson’s 1996 model we can
reasonably hypothesise that an IR system should be designed so as to reduce the
risk of failure by the user and, thereby, increase his or her sense of self-efficacy, but
the means whereby the risk is reduced must be a matter for the system designer.
However, better systems are likely to be designed if the designer understands the
ideas of risk/ reward and self-efficacy.
Again, Ellis’s work suggests that an IR system ought to provide more naviga-
tional routes for the user, providing not only Boolean or best-match search strate-
gies, but also the capacity to chain through citations in texts both backwards and
forwards in time, and with intelligent agents to monitor additions to the database
according to, say, the user’s last search or an established profile.
Similarly, given that virtually all studies of information-seeking behaviour
show the importance of personal networks, IR systems could well embody rou-
tines that would enable users to indicate their willingness to be put in contact with
others interested in the same research areas. By doing so, IR systems could
become genuine tools for collaborative work, not only within but across disci-
plines: the potential for this has been made real by the development of the Internet
and by modern software tools that allow the ‘desk-top’ to act as the interface to
the Internet and World Wide Web.
258
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Models
‘cognition’, or the level of interaction with the texts or their representation; and
the ‘situation’, or the context that provides the initial problem at hand.
Ingwersen’s model is shown in Figure 8. When we examine this model, we can
see its close family resemblance to other models of information seeking behav-
iour. In particular, the elements ‘user’s cognitive space’ and ‘social/organisational
environment’ resemble the ‘person in context’ and ‘environmental factors’ spec-
ified in Wilson’s models and the general orientation towards queries posed to an
IR system point to a concern with the ‘active search’, which is the concern of
most information-seeking models. Ingwersen, however, makes explicit a number
of other elements: first, he demonstrates that within each area of his model the
functions of the information user, the document author, the intermediary, the
interface and the IR system are the result of explicit or implicit cognitive models
of the domain of interest at that particular point. Thus, users have models of their
work-tasks or their information needs, or their problems or goals, which are usu-
ally implicit, but often capable of explication. Again, the IR system is an explica-
tion of the system designer’s cognitive model of what the system should do and
how it should function. Secondly, Ingwersen brings the IR system into the picture,
suggesting that a comprehensive model of information-seeking behaviour must
include the system that points to the information objects that may be of interest to
259
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
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the enquirer. Thirdly, he shows that various cognitive transformations take place
in moving from the life-world in which the user experiences a problem or identi-
fies a goal to a situation in which a store of pointers to information objects can be
satisfactorily searched and useful objects identified. Finally he points to the need
for these models or cognitive structures and their transformations to be effectively
communicated throughout the ‘system’, which will include the user, the author
and the IR system designer.
Thus, Ingwersen’s model, to a degree, integrates ideas relating to information
behaviour and information needs with issues of IR system design, and this,
together with the focus on cognitive structures and the idea of polyrepresentation,
is an important strength of the model. Saracevic suggests that [26]: ‘The weak-
ness is in that it does not provide for testability … and even less for application to
evaluation of IR systems’. However, recently, Borlund and Ingwersen [29] have
developed and tested an evaluative strategy on the basis of this model and have
demonstrated its value in testing interactive IR systems. A potential weakness
that remains is that the whole of information behaviour as defined in other mod-
els examined in this paper is subsumed under the heading of the ‘user’s cognitive
space’. Issues of how users arrive at the point of making a search, and how their
cognitive structures are affected by the processes of deciding how and when to
move towards information searching, may be lost. From the point of view of
Wilson’s 1996 model the significant part of Ingwersen’s model (apart from its
explicit cognitive theory orientation) is in the description of the ‘active search’
process and the elements of that process.
Belkin’s ‘episode’ model might be better termed an ‘activity’ model or ‘interac-
tion’ model, since its focus is upon the actions carried out in an information search,
from ‘scanning’ to ‘searching’, within a framework of three other dimensions:
‘goal of interaction’ (learning-selecting); ‘mode of retrieval’ (recognition-specifi-
cation); and ‘resource considered’ (information-meta-information). According to
Belkin et al. [28]: ‘Any single ISS (information-seeking strategy) can be described
according to its location along these four dimensions’. However, in the terminology
used in this paper, these would be better described as information-searching strate-
gies, since, although couched in terms of a generalised interaction between infor-
mation-searcher and information-provider, the focus of Belkin’s work is on the
design of IR systems.
Belkin and his colleagues then advocate the evolution of ‘scripts’ or plans
‘… for a dialogue between the user and the rest of the system … Such scripts,
based for instance, on, and abstracted from, observations of people as they engage
in information seeking, could be used as a means for structured human-computer
interaction aimed at achieving the goal of that particular ISS’. While such a goal
appears desirable, there may, of course, be significant problems in identifying suf-
ficiently generalised behaviour to produce a limited range of scripts for IR system
use. If, however, the underlying rules for script creation from user input could be
determined, a more intelligent system might be devised which would create an
appropriate script in response to the user’s initial interactive behaviour.
Saracevic’s own model (Figure 9) is described as a ‘stratified interaction
model’ and posits a (simplified) three level structure: surface, cognitive, and situ-
ational [26]. Again, this model shows a strong resemblance to that of Ingwersen.
At the surface level, a user interacts with a system through an interface by issuing
260
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All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Environment
Situation
ls
ve
n
le
User
tio
n
ta
knowledge, etc
io
ap
ct
Ad
ra
Query
te
characteristics
In
Interface
e
us
n
Computational
io
resources at
rm
n
tio
fo
In
ta
Informational
ap
resources
Ad
261
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Search Process
… Search strategies…
6. DISCUSSION
Models of information behaviour do not all attempt to describe the same set of
phenomena or activities: some, as in the case of Ellis [11] are concerned with
behavioural patterns in the actual search activity; others, like Kuhlthau [18] pre-
sent stages of activity, within which the behavioural patterns may occur. The
model presented here is of this second type in that it presents problem solving as
the overall framework for the activity of information seeking and shows that
Kuhlthau’s model may fit within the various stages of the information seeking
process. We can also suggest that Ellis’s behavioural model is a set of activities
within what Kuhlthau calls ‘collection’ and that all three of these are nested with-
in Wilson’s 1996 model of information behaviour in general.
This analysis of various models leads me to suggest that the various areas of
research within the general field of information behaviour may be seen (as
262
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Information behaviour
Information-seeking
behaviour
Information
search behaviour
Figure 11. A nested model of the information seeking and information searching
research areas
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1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Feedback Communicator
Processing and
use
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1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
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within that broad area, and information searching when the person interacts with
computer-based systems.
7. ANOTHER MODEL
Given the abundance of models in the field, it may seem unhelpful to introduce
another, but this model is intended (although it may not accomplish this) to pro-
vide a kind of linking or integration of at least some of the models discussed
above. This entire paper was stimulated by reading a paper by Saracevic [35], in
which he comments: ‘If the IR pioneers did not embrace relevance, but lets [sic]
say uncertainty as the basic notion, IR theory, practice, and evaluation would have
looked very different’.
It occurred to me that, although the concept has not been used in evaluating IR
systems (as Saracevic rightly says), nevertheless, it is, in effect, ‘the ghost at the
feast’ since we may assume that much (perhaps most?) information seeking and
retrieval are occasioned by uncertainty. Research in IR evaluation may not have
made much of the idea, but, from the perspective of the user, it is always there. In the
field of communication theory, also, uncertainty has a place in some writers’ work:
for example, Newcomb [36] suggests that communication is a ‘learned response to
strain’ (taking us back to the idea of stress as a causal factor) and that we are more
likely to find increased communication activity in the form of information seeking,
giving and exchange ‘under conditions of uncertainty and disequilibrium’.
If we accept this proposition, we will naturally ask, ‘What is the cause of the
uncertainty?’ A generalised answer is, ‘a problem’: the problem may be more or
less recognisable as a problem in the normally understood sense of the word, but
something in the individual’s life-world, which may be the world of everyday life
of the citizen, or the world of work of the scientist, professional worker, or what-
ever, has led in Schutz and Luckmann’s terms [37] to a discrepancy between the
typifications applied to the life-world and a phenomenon that, at first sight, can-
not be fitted into those typifications. In other words, the individual is faced with a
problematic situation.*
The solution of the problem, the resolution of the discrepancy, the advance from
uncertainty to certainty (or at least some pragmatic solution of the problem) then
becomes a goal of the person and we typify the resulting behaviour as goal-seeking
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1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
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Figure 13. A problem solving model of the information seeking and searching
process
behaviour. We then argue that en route to the goal, the individual moves from uncer-
tainty to increasing certainty and that there are stages in the problem-resolution
process that are identifiable and recognisable to the individual. These stages are:
problem identification (where the person is asking the question, ‘What kind of prob-
lem do I have?’), problem definition (‘Exactly what is the nature of my problem?’),
problem resolution (‘How do I find the answer to my problem?’) and, potentially,
solution statement (‘This is the answer to the problem’, or, if a pragmatic, rather
than a theoretically-based resolution has been found, ‘This is how we are going to
deal with the problem.’)
Clearly, the transition from problem identification to solution statement is not
without difficulty: if it was, there would be no problem, since (as Schutz and
Luckmann argue) the issue would be dealt with through the individual’s existing
typifications of phenomena in the life-world and his or her existing stock of
knowledge applicable to those typifications. We hypothesise that, (a) each stage
sees the successive resolution of more and more uncertainty, and (b) where uncer-
tainty fails to be resolved at any one stage, it may result in a feedback loop to the
previous stage for further resolution. We may represent this as in Figure 13.
In other words, and for example, failure to find a useful definition of the prob-
lem may result in a return to the problem identification stage, for further consid-
eration of the problematic situation if the uncertainty-resolution loop fails.
The important question at this point is, ‘How is uncertainty resolved?’ This is
where we can bring into the model the previous attempts at modelling informa-
tion behaviour and, specifically, those of Kuhlthau and of Ellis. One proposition
may be that Kuhlthau’s ‘stages’ can be seen not as steps in a single information
seeking activity, but reiterated steps that may occur in exploratory loops between
each link in the problem resolution chain shown above. The clue to this is
Kuhlthau’s suggestion that Collection (identified as one of the stages) actually
takes place within other stages and it is reasonable to ask, therefore, why collec-
tion should be typified as a separate, single stage, when it recurs.
Kuhlthau’s model (discussed earlier) has the stages Initiation, Selection,
Exploration, Formulation, Collection, and Presentation, which are described more
fully above. The model proposed here suggests that some of these terms can be used
to identify the stages through which an individual moves to resolve uncertainty:
266
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Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Alternatively, we might use Ellis’s behavioural model with its ‘features’ (starting,
browsing, chaining, etc.) as the basis for an in-depth analysis of the reiterated
search activities at each phase of the problem-solving process.
The idea that problem solving is the underlying motivation for information
searching is supported by Spink and Greisdorf on partial relevance [39]. In an
analysis of three studies of information search behaviour Spink and Greisdorf
show that the assessment by users of documents as partially relevant correlates
highly with variables such as a change in the user’s definition of the problem, a
change in the user’s relevance criteria, and a change in the user’s knowledge of
the problem. Spink and Greisdorf note that the assumptions of research into IR
system use that only the highly relevant items retrieved in a search are valued by
users and that categorical scales of relevance can be conflated to binary scales
(relevant/non-relevant) without loss of information, are erroneous and need to be
addressed by IR researchers.
Given the findings of Spink and Greisdorf, the model of information search
behaviour suggested above may provide a sound basis for the development of
research ideas.
8. CONCLUSION
Not all of the models presented above specifically include feedback [40] as an ele-
ment, but it is clear that feedback loops must exist within all models, since pro-
gression towards a goal is hardly ever unproblematic. For example, a person at
any of Kuhlthau’s stages may have to revisit an earlier stage as a result of prob-
lems experienced or new information found and, in Ellis’s model, a person
engaged in, for example, extracting may, as a result, need to return to chaining or
browsing to gather further information. Similarly, in Dervin’s model, a person
267
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Tel: +44 (0) 171 903 0000, Fax: +44 (0) 171 903 0011
Email: [email protected], WWW: http://www.aslib.co.uk/aslib
Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The ideas presented in this paper have benefited from discussions and comments
on drafts from Dr David Ellis, Nigel Ford, Dr Amanda Spink and Professor Peter
Willett. For whatever problems remain, however, I am entirely responsible.
I acknowledge the copyright owners’ permission to reproduce diagrams.
REFERENCES
268
Aslib, The Association for Information Management
Staple Hall, Stone House Court, London EC3A 7PB
Tel: +44 (0) 171 903 0000, Fax: +44 (0) 171 903 0011
Email: [email protected], WWW: http://www.aslib.co.uk/aslib
Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
269
Aslib, The Association for Information Management
Staple Hall, Stone House Court, London EC3A 7PB
Tel: +44 (0) 171 903 0000, Fax: +44 (0) 171 903 0011
Email: [email protected], WWW: http://www.aslib.co.uk/aslib
Journal of Documentation, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1999
© Aslib, The Association for Information Management.
All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
270
Aslib, The Association for Information Management
Staple Hall, Stone House Court, London EC3A 7PB
Tel: +44 (0) 171 903 0000, Fax: +44 (0) 171 903 0011
Email: [email protected], WWW: http://www.aslib.co.uk/aslib